iFixit Tears Down Nexus 5, Finds It Easily Repairable

The next morning after we finished our preview of the Nexus 5 with our first impressions of the device, the guys and gals over at iFixit rolled out their teardown of the Nexus 5 and answered some of our pressing questions about the device. While most people don’t really care about the components inside of the device, we do care and greatly appreciate that they tore one down for science (and sheer curiosity and hits).

Image Credit: iFixit

iFixit gave the Nexus 5 a repairability score of 8/10 with 10/10 being the most repairable. Considering that the iPhone 5S got a 6/10, the iPhone 5C got a 6/10 and the HTC One got a 1/10, the Nexus 5 is not only a cheaper alternative to all of these phones, but also a much more repairable one as well. If you are curious about how they tore down the Nexus 5, you can head on over to their website and read through the teardown like we did or you can watch the video that they made on YouTube.

If you want to save yourself some time, skip to 1:00 for the actual teardown which is just a summary of the images on the links above.

Either way, the interesting stuff was that the Nexus 5 is indeed using a Broadcom module for 802.11ac WiFi and that it is utilizing only one speaker in the bottom of the phone and is not actually a stereo speaker. We also got to see the camera module, however little is still known about the maker of the camera sensor or the technology behind it. From our experience in the preview, the camera itself is pretty good but the software camera behind it appears to be lacking.

We will be working hard on our Nexus 5 review over the coming days and weeks to bring to you the most comprehensive review that we can possibly deliver. And we will be putting a pretty big focus on the new features of Kit Kat as well as the camera, battery life, and network performance.